I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for transmitting digital information to locations throughout the world and in particular to a global digital news distribution system for transmitting digital news clips and/or digitized photographs for printing simultaneously from one or more locations anywhere in the world to one or more locations anywhere in the world.
II. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1A shows how a television station 28 receives a video clip from a remote location and sends that clip to another location for broadcasting. In particular, FIG. 1A shows a satellite earth station 40 with a large C or Ku disk 44 which uplinks C or Ku microwaves to satellite 20. Satellite 20 in turn downlinks these microwave signals to television station 28 where it can be broadcast live to a surrounding area or taped for broadcast at a later time. Alternatively, television station 28 can retransmit the video clip from disk 25 to another television station 29 having its own disk 30.
This process has a variety of drawbacks. First, the news information must be sent from point to point (a serial type of data transfer) rather than from point to multi-point (a parallel type of information transfer). Also, television station 28 can only receive in one direction (the direction in which it is pointed) and can only simultaneously transmit in multiple directions if it has multiple satellite dishes. This process has the further limitation of transmitting and storing video clips in analog form and consequently is not readily compatible with digital land networks such as ACUNET. Also, the current process does not provide on-demand news, but instead news clips must be transmitted on a prearranged basis from satellite earth station 40 to television station 28 and from television station 28 to television station 29.
In addition to the above limitations, the current process does not have a news distribution system which has both digital recording ability. Hence, a television station 29 cannot get its news clips from a hub station and immediately digitally edit those clips. The current process does not provide a digital data base which organizes information so that local television stations can log into a menu which provides a list of particular news clips which are available. The current process does not provide a flexible system which enables a hub station to transmit its video clips at various rates to accommodate various rates of data transfer at various receiving sites. In addition, the process is expensive and local stations cannot selectively choose which news clips they wish to receive.